Students are fleeing City College of San Francisco, new registration figures reveal, but the troubled school is fighting to bring them back with a major ad campaign on every outlet from Fox News to Animal Planet.

So far this year, 14,870 students have signed up for credit classes in the spring compared with 19,289 by this time last year, a 23 percent decline. And registration is down 34 percent compared with two years ago, a difference of 7,524 students, according to a daily count of spring registrations that began more than two weeks ago.

"Every lost student points to the strong possibility of an education lost," said Alisa Messer, president of the City College faculty union. "The vast majority of those students are not going to other colleges. We would be seeing thousands of new students at neighboring community colleges, and we're not."

Despite its plunging enrollment, City College remains one of the largest schools in the country. It enrolled nearly 80,000 students last year - most of them part-timers taking noncredit classes. But even the part-timers have dropped 10 percent since last year.

As students peel away, so do state funds. The college lost $14.3 million since 2011, nearly 9 percent of funding.

The gap refers to the difference between the number of "full-time equivalent" students registered now, 5,474, and the target number of 9,150.

And for the first time, college officials are using those numbers to make detailed decisions about how many classes they can offer and in which subjects. Before, it was largely guesswork.

The inattention was among dozens of serious problems that led an accrediting commission to place City College on its most severe sanction in 2012, and then announce last summer that the school will lose accreditation on July 31. Without accreditation, the school would have to close.

But City College wants students to know that it is repairing its deficiencies.

"About two-thirds of them have been rectified," said Art Tyler, City College's new chancellor.

The school is confident of its healthy future and is going all out to convince the public. The college will spend more than $78,000 on TV, radio, Facebook and billboards created by graphic design students, and in neighborhood newspapers such as the Bernal Journal, Sing Tao Daily and El Mensajero. That will include $18,000 for 36 cable TV channel ads, including the Cartoon Network, produced by its own broadcast students.

"The Cartoon Network (is) very strong with young men," said Peter Anning, the college's new marketing director. "No surprise, I guess," he laughed.

But the messages that have flashed on movie screens during previews saying, "City College: Open and Accredited!" are gone because too few people got there early enough to see them, Anning said.

Meanwhile, City College has asked the accrediting commission to reverse its decision on grounds that it overlooked the benefits of a new reserve fund the school set up to pay soaring health care obligations, Tyler said.

That decision is expected in January.

Three lawsuits have also been filed to try to stop the commission from yanking the accreditation: from the city of San Francisco, from a coalition called Save City College, and from the faculty union. The union and the city have also requested an injunction to halt the process immediately.

To help their case, they plan to use the declining enrollment numbers to show that the threatened loss causes "significant harm," a requirement for an injunction, Messer said.

Follow City College's progress

The college regularly updates a chart showing its progress on repairing deficiencies. Find that "Roadmap" at http://ccsfforward.com/.